The Axeman's Jazz

depressed and guilty as his daughter. About as much like a healer as the bewildered kid hanging on to her.
    The thing wouldn’t lift. All morning he went through the motions—asking questions, comforting, helping out where he could—and it was all empty action, all performed by a robot. Sonny was hovering somewhere above himself, not the one doing the work at all.
    Missy brought sandwiches at mid-afternoon, and he was surprised to see her, had forgotten she was coming. He wasn’t hungry at all.
    She said, “Want to go up on the roof?”
    “Sure.” He was surprised to find that he did, that once more he longed for air, for relief from these yellowish tile walls, from this suffering. He was surprised to find he had any preferences at all.
    Knowing he hadn’t eaten before he left home, she had brought egg salad on whole wheat, a sort of delayed breakfast. She’d found potato chips without salt (she disapproved strongly of salt), had sliced carrot sticks, and had even somehow dug up some peanut butter cookies, his favorite.
    He was annoyed by her solicitude. By her relentlessness, by her neediness, by her inability simply to let him be.
    She flapped her T-shirt against her skin. “Whoo. A breeze, finally. You have to go this far up to find one. Honestly, I think we’ll have to shave that poor little dog of yours—he gets so hot, he just sits and pants. He was so cute after you left this morning. You know what he did? He tried to get up in my lap, but he couldn’t reach, so he figured out how to get up on the coffee table and jump on the sofa from there. Wasn’t that smart?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Sonny? Sonny, what is it? You’re not even eating your sandwich.”
    “Missy, you’re not my mom.”
    “I didn’t say I was your mom. I’m your girlfriend and I want to know what’s going on.”
    “Nothing’s going on.”
    “Oh, Sonny.” She rubbed his thigh, looked pleadingly into his eyes. He could have thrown up.
    “Don’t be like that.”
    “Would you leave me alone for once? I get so damn tired of your everlasting
loving care,
I could jump off this roof.”
    “I just want to help.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper, and she looked down as she spoke, as if in shame, a little girl chastised.
    “Well, back off.”
    “You don’t know how bad I feel for you when you’re this way. It’s as if your pain is my pain—don’t you understand that?”
    “You know what, Missy? All this helpful mothering you’re always doing is really just a bid for attention. You want to feel okay about yourself, so you find somebody to
help
. Well, guess what? It’s not very goddamn helpful!”
    “Sonny, you’re yelling!”
    “The more I know you, the more I don’t see you growing up. You’re stuck in childhood, always looking for that nice daddy you never had—you can’t stand to see me sad or moody or anything else for a minute because then I’m not being your damn daddy.”
    He was starting to gibber, but he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t seem to get back on a logical train of thought. He knew he was mad at Missy, even though he might not be too clear about the reasons, and that was good enough. He just wanted to yell, spit out whatever came into his mind, at high volume.
    “You think you’re the only one in the world who was ever molested? You’re making a goddamn career out of it, Missy. When are you going to get over it? It’s time!”
    “Sonny! Oh, Sonny!”
    “I’m sick and tired of having to be so fucking understanding all the time. Oh, Missy’s like this because her life’s been so hard. She doesn’t know when to quit because there weren’t any boundaries in her family. Boundaries! Goddamn shrinky word! You taught me to say it yourself. Well, when are
you
going to get some goddamn boundaries? When are you going to learn that I’m me and you’re you, and to fucking leave me alone once in a while?”
    Her fist came down in the middle of his chest. “You fucker!” It was a meaningless insult, two syllables of nothingness, but her tone was as jagged and dangerous as a bread knife.
    Sonny! Oh, Sonny!
He remembered the desperate look in her eyes as she had said it, realized he hadn’t taken it in, and should have.
    Her open hand connected with his ear, with the whole side of his head, knocking him sideways. He wouldn’t have thought she had that much force in her, couldn’t understand what he had unleashed.
    Now both hands were fists, pounding him on the shoulders, in the